by James Jones
At the next corner he was very careful to check the street sign and make sure it was Vineyard, before he turned east. You’re really over the hill for good, this time, Prewitt. Your days as a thirty-year-man are over. When you dont show up tomorrow, and then they find old Fatso and start checkin, they wont be no doubt who it was done it. This time there wont be no getting back to the Post before you’re picked up, so as to get off with company punishment. This time its desertion. He did not know how far east Vineyard went, but it was the only street around here that went more than a block or two and he turned down it.
Below Beretania and King Streets toward the beach he knew the town like the back of his hand, but he did not know it up here. He knew enough to know that when you got out as far as the University all the east-west side streets stopped and then you had to either use Beretania or King to keep going east, or else cross over both of them to the beach side. That was going to be the hard part, crossing Beretania and King. The only chance was to find a straight street that ran down through both of them, so you would not have to walk along either one of them under the lights. They were not as populous out near the University as they were back in town, but they were still the main streets.
He followed Vineyard down to Punchbowl Street, then up Miller to Capt Cook, and back down Capt Cook to Lunalilo. There was a straight stretch on Lunalilo of over half a mile, but then it deadended at Makiki. From the corner he could see the Masonic Temple, so he knew there were no through cross streets here, because this was just a block from Kalakaua Ave that cut off toward Waikiki. Beyond Kalakaua there were wide streets on the beach side, but here there were only a few dead end lanes and then nothing, clear down to the KGHB radio station on Kapiolani Boulevard. He had to go up Makiki till he hit a street east and go clear across Punahou and then cut back down.
Complicated. Very complicated. Why was it everything was always so goddam complicated? Even the simplest things was so goddam complicated when you come to doing them.
It was over a quarter of a mile up Makiki before he hit Wilder Ave east. He followed Wilder half a mile before he found Alexander Street that cut clear down to Beretania, but when he got down there he found Alexander did not cross it. It was beginning to get into him by then, and he was having to keep a very tight hold on his mind. He scouted up and down above Beretania half an hour, looking for a street that went clear through. But by then it had become all nightmare and wasnt so bad. From Alexander Street on he was laughing all the time.
He crossed Beretania and King on McCully Street that ran clear down to Kalakaua. There was Fern Street and Lime Street and Citron Street and Date Street and he remembered from somewhere that Date Street crossed Kapiolani Boulevard and the Territorial Golf Course clear into Kaimuki. It was over a mile across the golf course to Kaimuki and after that he did not remember the streets he used to angle up through Kaimuki to Waialae where he hit Wilhelmina. All he remembered was that after he got to Alma’s he would be all right.
When he crossed the drainage canal in the middle of the golf course on Date Street, he dropped the package containing the knife into the water and watched the string of bubbles come up.
He was going to have a nice scar there, he thought with a giggle. The scars on a man’s body were like a written history of his life. Each one had its own story and memory, like a chapter in a book. And when a man died they buried them all with him and then nobody could ever read his histories and his stories and his memories that had been written down on the book of his body. Poor man, he thought whose written history is buried with him. Poor Fatso. He bet Fatso had lots of scar-histories. He had guts too, Fatso did. And Prewitt killed him. Poor Prewitt.
You’re getting silly, he warned himself, you better straighten up and fly right. You aint even to Kaimuki yet. You got a good piece to go yet, lets you and me go over our scars and see can we remember the stories. We’ve got a good many histories, too.
There was the one on the index finger of his left hand he had got that time in Richmond Indiana on the bum when the nigger saved him from the guy with the knife. But that was only a little one, he’d been a kid then. Wonder where the nigger is now? Wonder where the guy is?
Then there was the one on his left wrist. That was a bigger one. He had fell off the roof of the house in Harlan and gashed it on a nail and cut the artery. His mother run and got Uncle John and Uncle John stopped the bleeding or he would of died probly. When his father came home he laughed about it. His father was dead now. Uncle John was dead too. His mother was dead too. And it had all seem so important to all of them at the time, except his father, who wasnt there. And where was it now? It was on his left wrist, thats where.
And when you die?
Then its gone.
He come awful close to dyin lots of times. He had the scars to prove it. And he wasnt dead yet.
But you’ll have to die sometime.
Thats right. Thats true. And then they’re all gone. If they cremate you, it’ll be a regular book burning, wont it?
There was the scar under his left eyebrow on his eyelid, just a thin pencil line now, that he got at Myer in the ring. They wanted to stop the fight but he talked them out of it and won by a knockout. The doc was going to sew it up, but the trainer raised such hell and insisted so loud for an adhesive bridge that that was what they finally did and hardly left any scar at all. It would have been a hell of a scar if they’d sewed it or clamped it. Wonder where the doc is now? Wonder where the trainer is? Both still at Myer? At the time he’d wish they would of sewed it because he wanted a good scar then.
What a kid, Prewitt. What a wise punk. Well, you’ve got it now. You’ve got a lot of them now.
There was the scars he got in the Stockade, still new and red. And there was all the scars he’d got in all the barracks, coming in drunk and falling over the footlockers. He had lots of scars. He had a real history. Robert E Lee Prewitt, a history of the United States in one volume, from the year 1919 to the year 1941, uncompleted, compiled and edited by We The People. There were the scars he had got on the county road gang in Georgia, and the scars he had got in Mississippi in the city lockup. There were the scars he had got from the police, and the scars he had got from the enemies of the police.
He knew when it was Wilhelmina Rise Street because it was so goddam steep. It really winded him. Really getting out of shape any more. Ought to do a little roadwork. Getting old.
There was the two scars he had got the last year at Myer on the fatigue detail when he was working in the attic and fell through the skylight at the Officers’ Gymnasium. The glass cut a line from his left sideburn down to his mouth-corner, and a big gash in his right hip. It was the ony time he ever got to see the inside of the Officers’ Gymnasium. And now you couldnt even see the line on his face except right after he’d shaved.
So many years. So many scars. Where the hell they all go to anyway?
There was the scar he got in the fist fight in Washington, from an uppercut right on the point of the chin, and he went all fuzzy and then he was on the ground, and the other guy was gone, and the scar turned coal black afterwards and he never could understand why unless it was because of his beard but he had another scar in his beard where Koleman’d knocked two teeth through his lower lip when Koleman beat him for the Class I Championship and that one never turned coal black. Maybe when he fell he got dirt in it maybe, the one on his chin.
The lights were on in the house. That was good. That meant he wouldnt have to use his key and he couldnt remember if he’d brought his key or not. You see, he hadnt meant to go over the hill and come up here tonight. He had meant to go right back to the Post. That was what he had meant to do.
He knocked with the brass knocker and Alma opened the door in person, Georgette right behind her.
“Oh my God!” Alma said.
“Jesus Christ!” Georgette said.
“Hello, Baby,” he said; “Hi, Georgette. Long time no see”; and fell in through the door.
Book Five<
br />
The Re-enlistment Blues
Chapter 45
THE PAIN DID NOT really start until the next morning. The next morning, of course, it was worse. The stiffness had come by then, and with it the soreness and dull pain of healing that was always worse than the sharp clear pain of getting it. He was a pretty sick boy for a couple of days.
But then pain was a thing he knew about. Pain was like an old friend he had not seen for a long time. He knew how to handle pain. You had to lie down with pain, not draw back away from it. You let yourself sort of move around the outside edge of pain like with cold water until you finally got up your nerve enough to take yourself in hand. Then you took a deep breath and dove in and let yourself sink down in it clear to the bottom. And after you had been down inside pain a while you found that like with cold water it was not nearly as cold as you had thought it was when your muscles were cringing themselves away from the outside edge of it as you moved around it trying to get up your nerve. He knew pain. Pain was like ring-fighting; if you kept going back in there long enough you finally got an instinct for it; you never knew just when it came, or where it came from, but suddenly you discovered you had it and had had it a long time without knowing it. That was the way it was with pain.
Pain was like with a village at the foot of a mountain that had a cathedral built on its shoulder high up over the town and the bells in the cathedral never stopped playing “The Old Rugged Cross.”
He had come to on a divan about five-thirty, rising fighting up out of exhausted sleep with the impression that they had him back in the Stockade and Major Thompson was branding him under the left arm with a large capital P for the killing of Fatso, thinking it was the same as the stencil they used on the fatigue jackets except they were branding him for life with it but every time he tried to jerk away from it the brand only burned that much deeper.
Then he had seen Georgette sitting in the big armchair watching him unwinkingly and Alma lying back in the wicker chaise-longue with her eyes closed above the dark circles. They had undressed him and cleaned him up and put a compress over the cut and bandaged it on with gauze around his chest.
“What time is it?” he said.
“About five-thirty,” Georgette had said, and got up.
Alma jerked upright wide awake, her closed eyes coming wide open staring at nothing without sleepiness, and then followed Georgette over to him on the divan.
“How do you feel?” Georgette said.
“Pretty sore. This bandage pretty tight.”
“We made it extra tight on purpose,” Alma said. “You lost quite a bit of blood. Tomorrow we’ll take it off and put on one not so tight.”
“How does it look?”
“Not so bad,” Georgette said. “It could have been a lot worse. The muscles isnt severed. You owe a great debt of thanks to your ribs though, my boy.”
“You’ll have a nice scar,” Alma said. “But it’ll heal up all right in a month or so.”
“You gals should have been nurses.”
“Every good whore should have a course in practical nursing,” Georgette grinned. “It comes in handy.”
He noticed there was a new look on both their faces that he had never seen there before.
“What did the other guy look like?” Alma had smiled.
“He’s dead,” Prew said. Then he added, rather unnecessarily he thought later, “I killed him.”
Both their smiles had gradually faded off. They had not said anything.
“Who was he?” Georgette said.
“Just a dogface,” he said, and paused. “He was the Chief Guard in the Post Stockade.”
“Well,” Georgette said. “Well, I’ll go make you a cup of hot beef bouillon. You need to build up your strength.”
Alma watched her until she had gone up the three little steps into the kitchen.
“Did you kill him on purpose?”
Prew nodded. “Yes.”
“Thats what I thought. That was why you came here, wasnt it?”
“I meant to go back to the Post so they wouldnt suspect me. Then I was going to come down later, after this’d blown over.”
“And how long have you been out of the Stockade?”
“Nine days,” he said. He said it automatically, without having to count.
“Over a week,” she said, “and you didnt even call me up. You might at least have called me up.”
“I didnt want to take any chances of fouling up.” Then he grinned. “And I didnt want to risk getting you into trouble. Course, I forgot all about the possibility of getting cut up so bad I couldnt go back.”
Alma didnt seem to think it was humorous.
“Didnt Warden get in touch with you?” he said. “I ask him to.”
“Yes,” Alma said, “he got in touch with me. He came down to the New Congress. That was how I found out you were in jail. Otherwise, I wouldnt even have known. I think you might at least have written a letter.”
“I cant write letters,” Prew said. He paused and looked at her.
“Well,” Alma said, “of course if you cant write them . . .”
“Did Warden—” he said, and stopped.
She looked at him, waiting for him to finish it, a look of almost contempt coming onto her face. When he didnt go on, she said, “Did Warden what? He was a perfect gentleman, if thats what you mean.”
Prew moved his head vaguely, looking up at her.
“He was kind,” she said, enumerating them, “and considerate, and thoughtful, and gentle, and a perfect gentleman.”
Prew tried to imagine Warden being like that.
“Much more so than a lot of other men I have met,” Alma told him.
“He’s a good joe, all right.”
“He certainly is. He’s a fine man.”
Prew clamped his jaws shut on what he wanted to say.
“You dont know what its like up there,” he said, instead. “Its not a big help to a guy’s imagination. Four months and eighteen days, and every night there is all that time you lay in your bunk with the lights out, before you finally go to sleep.”
The contempt faded off of her face and she smiled at him brimmingly apologetically. It was the same smile of a while ago that he had never seen on her face before—maternal, solicitous, tender, almost happy, and infinitely more gentle than he had ever seen her look.
“You’ve had a hard time,” she smiled self-castigatingly. “And here I am being mean and nasty, when you’re sick and in pain and need rest more than anything. I guess,” she said, “I’m afraid I’m in love with you.”
Prew looked at her proudly, even with his side prodding him angrily, thinking she was a professional whore which instead of making him less made him even more proud, because a professional whore who knows the score is even harder to make fall in love with you than a respectable woman. Not many men are ever loved by professional whores, he thought proudly.
“Hows for a kiss?” he grinned. “I’ve been here this long and you aint even kissed me.”
“Yes I have,” Alma said. “But you were asleep.”
But she kissed him again anyway.
“You’ve had a hard time,” she said softly.
“Not as hard as some guys,” he said woodenly, seeing again the by now familiar, every-detail-sharply-remembered, picture of Blues Berry standing nose and toes against the gym wall and by inference seeing Angelo Maggio in the same spot.
“I guess I’m over the hump for good now,” he said. “Even after I’m well I still cant go back. When I dont show today they’ll know I did it. They’ll be looking for me.”
“What do you plan to do?”
“I dont know.”
“Well, at least you’ll be safe here. Nobody here knows who we are. So you can stay here if you want,” she said, looking up with a question at Georgette coming in with the hot soup.
“You can stay as long as you want, kiddo,” Georgette grinned, “as far as I’m concerned. If thats what you two are wondering.”
<
br /> “We hadnt mentioned it,” Alma said. “But thats a point that would have to be considered: how you felt.”
“I’ve always had a soft spot for crazy sons of bitches,” Georgette grinned. “And I aint got nothing to thank the Law for except my free medical examination every Friday.”
“I’m glad you feel that way, Georgia,” Alma said.
“I’ll be a fugitive from Leavenworth,” Prew reminded her. “A murderer, to the Law.”
“To coin a phrase,” Georgette said, “up the Law’s.”
The coined phrase obviously did not appeal much to Alma, but she did not say anything.
“Can you sit up by yourself for this?” Georgette said, moving the cup.
“Sure,” Prew said, and swung his legs down over the side of the divan, pulling his trunk up. Bright hot spots danced on a warm moist film in front of his eyes.
“You crazy dam fool!” Alma cried angrily. “You want to start it bleeding again? Lay back down and let me help you.”
“I’m up now,” Prew said weakly. “But I’ll let you help me back down after I drink the soup.”
“You’re going to get lots of this,” Georgette said, holding the cup to his lips. “You’ll probly get so much of it you’ll probly be damned sick of it.”
“It tastes good now though,” he said between swallows.
“Wait till tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” Alma smiled, “we’ll feed you a good big thick steak, rare and bloody.”
“And liver and onions,” Georgette grinned.
“A T-bone?” Prew said.
“Or a porterhouse,” Alma said.
“Man, man,” he said, “stop it, you’re killing me.”
